Enemy
by SadArticle
Summary: My first Star Trek ficlet! (Be kind, or constructive!) Based on the first season episode 'The Enemy Within'. Captain Kirk wasn't the only crew member broken in two by the transporter malfunction.


Enemy

_The first season episode _The Enemy Within_ is so jarring that I can't even bring myself to watch the whole way through. And that's not because I have a massive crush on Captain Kirk and can't bear to see him behave so wildly out of character, or even because of how dramatic!Shatner plays the darker side of the captain, but because of how Yeoman Janice Rand is treated by the scriptwriter. Attacked and nearly raped, Janice is automatically disbelieved, forced to face her attacker, and then has to end the episode with a quip from Spock about the 'evil' captain having some 'interesting qualities'. No fallout, no apology, just a lecherous remark implying that she enjoyed being mauled by Kirk. So I had to write a final scene, between the captain and his yeoman, where both have to face up to the truth – and perhaps Janice gets to move forward with a degree of dignity._

Janice Rand needed to talk.

Trying to condense her many conflicting and powerful emotions into coherent reports wasn't working, as the broken PADD by the door to her quarters actively testified to. Before she could move forward, Janice knew she had to work back over the past few days, but to do that she would have to tell someone how she was feeling.

And she had one person in mind.

Five times Janice Rand asked the ship's computer to locate Captain Kirk, and four times she did nothing with the location she was given. Finally she found herself outside his quarters, actually steeling herself to engage in a routine which had until very recently been part of her regular duties. How many times had she stood in this very corridor, holding a PADD or a food tray, waiting for him to let her in?

Before she could change her mind, Janice pressed the intercom.

"Come in," the captain's voice instructed, and the door slid open.

She paused on the threshold to watch him working at his desk. Taking advantage of his distracted state, Janice stared at his bowed head and lowered eyes, his nimble fingers darting a stylus between two PADDs and the way the display screen bathed him in green light. The sight was at once so familiar and so disturbing that she nearly turned and fled, but then he came to a break in his work.

"Yes, what is it?" he asked, looking up. "Oh – Yeoman Rand."

Her name sounded heavily in the silence between them. The captain got to his feet in formal acknowledgement, his fingers braced against the surface of the desk. There his natural courtesy seemed to fail him, and instead of asking her to come forward or take a seat, he merely watched and waited for her cue.

"Can I talk to you, Captain?" Janice ventured, sounding brave while keeping her eyes down.

"Of course, Yeoman," he answered quickly, keen to approve without seeming to anticipate. "But would you – we could go somewhere else, if you prefer. The briefing room, or Doctor McCoy's office, perhaps?"

The gesture both touched and grieved her. "Here is fine, sir," she told him.

"Take a seat, then."

Janice perched on the edge of the chair facing his desk, risking an upwards glance when she heard him settle back into his own seat. This was the captain she thought she knew – professional, caring, approachable. She wanted to trust him, but couldn't forget the nightmare that haunted her.

"I would like to request a transfer, Captain," she announced.

Her eyes flitted from his face to the surface of the desk. When he looked down, nodding slowly in reluctant acceptance, Janice was able to watch his expression. A small furrow between his eyebrows signalled that he was troubled, she recalled.

"To another post, or another ship?" he asked, catching her eyes briefly before she could drop her gaze.

"I would –" Janice swallowed her words. She couldn't bring herself to say, 'I would like to leave the _Enterprise'_, because she didn't, not really. But how could she stay?

"Another ship, if possible, sir," she finished. "Or a starbase."

The captain sighed heavily. "It might take a while," he warned her, "but you can continue working with Lieutenant Uhura in communications until then, of course."

"Yes, sir."

"You'll have the best possible recommendation, wherever and whatever you chose to move onto, Yeoman," Captain Kirk promised. "And – I'll be sorry to lose you."

Janice met those mellow hazel eyes and almost broke her resolve to remain calm and practical. "Thank you, Captain," she choked.

"You shouldn't be thanking me, Yeoman," Kirk corrected her quietly. "This is all my fault."

"Oh no, sir, really –"

Before she knew what she was saying, Janice found herself keen to excuse him. The transporter had split the captain's personality, creating a base half, violent and power-hungry, and a purer but weaker counterpart. Until Spock and McCoy had found a solution, there had been two very different versions of the captain vying for control of the ship and the crew, and the other Kirk had trapped his yeoman in her quarters, not – not –

"Yeoman Rand – Janice – please believe that I would never have done anything to hurt you under normal circumstances," the captain went on. "But I accept that I am still to blame for both the loss of our friendship, and the – the exile – of an intelligent, loyal and valued member of this crew."

Janice burst into tears.

Her head was spinning. She was leaving for those very reasons – the destruction of her working relationship with the captain, her loss of trust in him and certain other commanding officers, and the feelings of embarrassment, shame and fear that she couldn't shake – yet she still valued the opinion of this one man.

She knew that he believed he was telling the truth. And until the attack in her quarters, she would have taken his word without a doubt. They had been alone together many times, and he was either friendly or polite with his assistant, depending on his mood. If she made too much of a fuss, he sometimes snapped at her, but always apologised later. Once she had found him stretched out on his bed, covering his eyes with one arm, and concern for his wellbeing had kept her hovering by the door when she should really have left him alone. He didn't complain, though, just got up and carried on working.

"Yeoman –" the captain said, appealing to her from behind his desk. "I don't know what else I can do."

Breathing deeply and dabbing at her eyes, Janice could only shake her head.

"You do believe me now, don't you?" the captain asked. "I know nothing can change what happened, but – I would never – to hurt _you_ –"

"Please don't, sir," Janice gasped. "Don't talk about it."

"Sorry," he said, in that curiously soft tone of voice he had. "I'm making everything worse."

In that moment, sitting stiffly on the edge of a chair in the captain's office, afraid to look at him again, what Janice wanted most in the universe was to travel back in time somehow and undo what had happened. She wanted her old captain back, the kind-hearted man who forgot to eat regular meals and suffered from headaches but hated to be fussed over. The thoughtful, eternally curious captain who lead by example and knew his crew well, while maintaining a respectful, almost enigmatic distance from all but his closest friends: Captain James T. Kirk.

"I can't think straight, Captain," she tried to explain. "What I know – what I've been told – and what I feel are completely different. My head and – and my heart, I guess – are at odds, to the point where I don't know what to think."

"You don't have to tell me," he said.

"I do, though," she insisted. "I think I do, Captain. You see, I did once believe in what you say, because – because I wanted to care for you, and you would never let me. You were the kind of captain who treated me with respect because I was a member of your crew –in your eyes, I was always a yeoman first and a woman second. I trusted you, and now that everything has changed, I realise that's because I felt ... safe ... around you."

"And now you no longer feel safe," the captain concluded. "Or trust me."

"I'm sorry, Captain," Janice said weakly. "I wish we could go back and erase the past, but whenever I look at you –"

He watched her face flood with shame, and felt the heat creeping up from his own collar. For once he was glad that she could no longer face him.

"I'm sorry too, Janice," he told her truthfully.


End file.
